Climate hysteria spawns fears of vampire bats now?

With the emergence of warm spring weather comes the return of the Mexican Freetail bats under Congress Bridge and the remote possibility that a feared and foreign species of bat could make its way into Texas.

The increase in global climate temperatures has raised concerns about the vampire bat species travelling from Mexico and South and Central America into the southern and central regions of Texas. Carin Peterson, training and outreach coordinator of the Office of Environmental Health and Safety, said even if vampire bats are not making their appearance, Austin’s surrounding caves and popular bat attraction, Congress Avenue Bridge, already have their annual bat species.

“Biologists are paying attention to the warming climate and what potential impacts that could bring, including non-native wildlife, but this is not something that will likely happen within the next few years,” Peterson said.

The possibility of these bloodsucking bats travelling into Austin and its surrounding areas, however, is not likely for many decades, said Mylea Bayless, conservation programs manager for Bats Conservation International in Austin.

“There are a lot of factors involved in whether or not the animal could reach Austin, which includes more than just temperature range,” Bayless said. “There are a lot of factors when it comes to what place an animal is occupying like habitat and food availability.”

Bayless said if the climate change models predict bats coming into Central Texas, it’s not likely these bats will set up shop in the city.

“If they did reach into Texas, the impact would be negligible,” Bayless said. “Most commonly they feed on livestock so there would be potentially some vampire bat interaction with livestock that people could perceive as problematic in rural areas.”

The misconception that all bats are bloodsuckers causes the death of other species that are beneficial, Bayless said.

“Sometimes all other bats wind up being persecuted because [people] think every bat is a vampire bat, and that fear of vampire bats caused the widespread killings of beneficial bats that eat insects and pollinate plants,” Bayless said.

We’ve been hearing from Dianne and Katie et al for years how global warming is killing all of the bats (except those anchors of course).

By the way, human vampires are just now recovering from a serious decline over the last decade. It happened when Congress was fiddling with the dates for daylight savings time and changing it constantly. The vampires were confused (like everyone else) and one midnight they all arose from their coffins an hour too early. It violated their union contract and they had to be eliminated. Rumor has it that they are beginning to recover.